Dr. Alexey Root

Dr. Alexey Root will be appearing April 10 and April 12 at huge gatherings. On April 10, Dr. Root is signing her books about chess in education (and libraries!) at the Texas Library Association Annual Conference. Look for Alexey Root in the exhibit hall in the ABC-CLIO/Libraries Unlimited booths, 2122 and 2123, on Thursday, April 10. A complete list of authors at the conference can be found at this link.

Greenhill chess students in the beginner and advanced groups tried the "3 on 3" challenge from Dr. Alexey Root’s Science, Math, Checkmate: 32 Chess Activities for Inquiry and Problem Solving. One six-year-old boy commented that trying different moves to find the right solution was "like science."

The seven high school students attending Denton High School chess club today played chess games for fun. One pair of students played a king safety vs. material drill, where white plays without a rook on h1 and black's king to start on e4 with play continuing normally from there. Dr. Alexey Root continued her game from last week against two students.

For April 2, St. Vincent’s chess students met in the Parish Hall for "bughouse." Dr. Root had four students demonstrate how bughouse is played while other students gathered around to watch. Dr. Root also provided a poster with rules and verbal explanations of those rules.

Greenhill chess students tried the "Choices" challenge from Dr. Alexey Root’s sixth book Thinking with Chess: Teaching Children Ages 5-14. The challenge teaches pawn promotion and gives checkmating practice. It’s also fun for children because they get to roll dice!

Dr. Alexey Root taught the en passant rule using material from Children and Chess: A Guide for Educators to all three groups at Greenhill School. The beginners then paired up to play Pawn Games and raised their hands when en passant opportunities arose in their games.

Dr. Alexey Root will be signing her books about chess in education (and libraries!) at the Texas Library Association Annual Conference. Look for Alexey Root in the exhibit hall in the ABC-CLIO/Libraries Unlimited booths, 2122 and 2123, on Thursday, April 10. A complete list of authors at the conference can be found at this link.

After a brief review of the en passant rule, Dr. Root taught the Criteria Challenge activity from Science, Math, Checkmate: 32 Chess Activities for Inquiry and Problem Solving (2008, pp. 28-30) to Denton High School students. The five high school students attending were able to solve all four challenges, working in groups of 2 and of 3.

Dr. Root taught en passant to the Intermediate and Advanced groups. After showing the rule on the demonstration board, each group tried the Create challenge from Thinking with Chess: Teaching Children Ages 5-14. This challenge involves creating a 10 move, notated game with three en passant captures.

For the Beginners, Dr. Root gave the students examples of what is stalemate and what is checkmate (using a King and Queen vs. King) as models first, on the demonstration board. Then Dr. Root said, “You have a king and queen. Your partner has a king. Set up 4 different positions that are checkmates and two positions that are stalemates.” Then they showed Dr. Root (one position at a time) the six positions they created.

Dr. Alexey Root tested pairs of students on basic checkmates. Beginners were tested on king and two rooks versus king. Intermediates were tested on king and queen versus queen. There was not time to test some of the intermediate students and all of the advanced students.